Congrats to four Dawgs selected as AP All-Americans.
Also…
Speaking of Drew Bobo, some noted he was out of the scrimmage this past weekend.
Reports are that he had a finger injury that required surgery…no great details on the extent and time of recovery, but sounds fairly minor and something that can be recovered from pretty quickly.
We’ll know soon enough.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome back Cole Speer.
You may remember Cole from the most recent SECCG, right?
I know I do. Here’s hoping he pulls a repeat in Tuscaloosa.
I wonder what Brett Thorson is up to?
It’s a little bit late, but Marc Weiszer of the Athens Banner-Herald reported on Bobo’s presser last week on how he plans on opening up the offense this year, and here’s what the OC had to say:
“It comes down to a lot of things,” Bobo said Wednesday Aug. 12. “Identifying playmakers that make plays. We call it competitive excellence. When the opportunity presents itself to make a play, make those plays.”
Bobo added other factors include the offensive line needing to protect, Stockton needing to “see things better,” and the offense “being more aggressive at times to push the ball down the field.
He said “a lot of what we did,” last season was to protect Stockton with calls made as a first-year starter and provide “easy outlets,” to the now departed Zachariah Branch.
A more mature Stockton, he said, will allow Georgia to “evolve as an offense,” and he doesn’t want Stockton to be “so risk-averse you’re afraid to push the ball down the field.
Bobo said he’s talked to the offense about taking more shots down field.
“You learn what you can and can’t do,” he said.
Georgia posted 58 plays of 20 or more yards last season in Stockton’s first season as starter, down from 69 in 2024 and 85 in 2023, per cfbstats.com. Pass plays of 20 or more yards ranked 56th with 42, down from eighth with 59 in 2024 and sixth with 65 in 2023.
Smart told the SEC Network he wants more off schedule plays to turn into explosives. He said broken plays when Stockton took off and made a play led to explosive plays.
“There are chances for explosives on broken plays,” Bobo said. “Gunner had a lot of those last year on broken plays where he scrambled and made plays. Sometimes he didn’t get enough space between him and a defender and took some wicked shots. A lot of that is on Gunner.” (Emphasis added)
Okay, truly I understand that a new Quarterback playing in his first full season could use some easy plays to help him settle in to a rhythm, and I won’t say that Gunner was without his highlight reel moments last year. He had some great games, he had some average games. Given that Arian Smith was playing in New Jersey, it didn’t mean that the downfield threat had to disappear altogether, either.
As I posted last week, the most curious thing to me is the underutilization of our tight end room in the passing game…but that’s more of an optics element, isn’t it? Were there calls to push the ball deep or to a tight end where Gunner checked down to the easiest play? Or were they all designed plays to force an easy option for efficiency?
The mantra last year was “run the ball, stop the run”. Run oriented offense typically speaks to clock control and game control, so it would stand to reason that this would be more by design…and at what point in the season should the training wheels come off to trust him to make the big throws downfield? We saw the potential in the deep pass to Humphreys at Tennessee, so the talent is definitely there.
But when you add in the factors of dropped balls, low percentage chances on deep throws to maintain drives, and a sometimes sketchy offensive line that had moments of greatness and moments of pure terror, the combination of factors lends itself to a coach making the determination that the “Safe” strategy is the only strategy to follow.
It’s Year 2 for Gunner and I’m guessing it’ll be his last, maybe, but it’s now or never with a talented offensive line and every imaginable weapon around you. Happy feet scrambles for five yards may net positive gains, but when you have a unicorn tight end running free down the middle of the field or a receiver completely open down the sideline, at some point you’ll lost the trust of the fans, or worse, the trust of your skill position players.
Talk is cheap. We’ve been hearing about “havoc” and “explosives” for a while now and seem to have been generating less of both lately. Schumann is not without his own level of criticism on the defensive side, and for all the talk about elite this and elite that, seeing it translate into touchdowns and turnovers would do a hell of a lot more to instill fear in the opponent than a bunch of press room conversations, no?
Some interesting quick takes from yesterday’s AP Poll release:
Clemson is unranked for the first time in 15 years. Swinney took over in 2009 so he was there when they were last unranked, but the drop off of Clemson in the NIL era is something to be studied…from “our transfers are high school prospects who transferred to Clemson” to actually now having to lean on the portal, Swinney may be a few steps behind Kirby…but the question is, how long will IPTAY hold on to the Anderson College legend?
Also, this:
If Kalen DeBoer isn’t on a hot seat in Tuscaloosa, then he must not be testing out the chairs around there.
Like I said in the previous post…beating Alabama in Tuscaloosa isn’t just a desire, it’s a necessity this year. It’s expected and, not a shocker here…it’s at night.
The only Dixieland Delight will be Georgia leaving with a W, and not just by Georgia fans, but pretty much the rest of the country and especially the SEC.
Credit to poetdawg for coming up with this idea for today’s Roundtable…but the question for the day is this: what game on our schedule is considered a “meteor game”?
To get help with what this means…the Urban Dictionary defines a meteor game as this:
A “meteor game” is a sporting event in which both teams are disliked and the preferred winner is a meteor that crashes into the stadium and causes both teams to lose”.
Quite frankly, if we were playing Kentucky this year, I’d say it would be the Georgia Kentucky game…not because both teams are hated, but from my perspective, whenever we play Kentucky it feels like the worst version of ourselves shows up and I just wished the game never existed. Maybe not lose it, but just not play it. Yecch.
But there are a few games to choose from, where the perspective of most people would be that it would be a joy to see us and our opponent to lose.
Georgia at Alabama – October 10th, Night Game
Who likes either of these teams in this game? Hated by the traditional West of the Conference and hated by the East of the conference, as well as by B1G teams of all colors, people are likely praying for a cosmic event to occur is Tuscaloosa. Also, with the reputation that Alabama has right now, being ranked outside the Top 10 for the first time in 2008 (we all know what happened that year, right?) if Georgia does anything but leave the Gumps crying by games end will be an undesirable result for all involved. Nothing beats seeing an Alabama fan crying, but many like to see us miserable, too.
Oklahoma at Georgia – September 26th, Flex
Outside of one of the greatest Bowl Games ever played, we have to accept that the SEC hates us, B1G hates us, and the former Big XII hates Oklahoma, as does most of Texas. That’s a pretty broad reach.
Georgia vs Missouri – November 14th, Flex
The redheaded stepchild of the SEC versus the Evil Empire, plus the past hate from the Big XII makes this a game where you are cheering to see what it might have been like to be on the earth when the dinosaurs expired. Also a good game for melatonin.
So what about you…what’s the meteor game you’re seeing on our schedule this year?
Ladies and gentlemen, this is what peak coping looks like.
These are the same people that will say Florida is more of an elite program than Georgia since 1990, let’s ignore everything that happened in the 100 years prior.
They like to argue that Kirby’s playing days hatred that was established in the 90s is fueling his passion for beating Florida. I guess the same holds true for Tennessee, but what about Tech? Kirby went 3-1 against Tech as a player, with this last game against the NATS being a 21-19 loss. He went 1-3 against Florida and 0-4 against Tennessee, yet he’s only lost to Tennessee once and Tech once. He never played against Texas and is 3-0 as a head coach against the Longhorns (correction…3-1, forgot about the “We’re Back Sugar Bowl”.
They’re not wrong that Napier was awful and Mullen gave up, even if he was the Portal Master. Sumrall is talking a big game, but, hey, so did the two listed above and where did that get them?
Maybe, just maybe, he’s actually just a great coach. I know Florida hasn’t seen one of those in a long, long time, so maybe that’s why they’re having such a hard time making sense of it all.
Still not much leaking out of scrimmage notes that’s unusual, you know, the typical stuff:
Of note, nothing much such be made from preseason anything. They’re usually set up to test schemes, or practice particular elements of a game, and not a complete look at a team. Guarantee you that what we’ll here next week is that the offense was shining and much improved while the defense took a step back. By the next scrimmage, it’ll be that it was World War III and everyone was playing at a high level, yet Kirby still sees lots of growth and work to do with this team. Put it on repeat, it’ll be the same way for infinity.
You’ll also see leaked images from other teams showing acrobatics and amazing plays, and not the messy slop that is fall camp. So it goes.
One thing that I am hearing is how impressive the organization of these scrimmages are, serving as practices, too. Here’s a little sneaker that came out on the socials, as well.
I know some of y’all on here are privileged enough to attend, so feel free to leave your notes and insights in the comments section.
It’s just around the corner scamps.
Wondering what happened to the big scores in recent years? The days of marching up and down the field and racking up 63 points against teams? Well, in a word, analytics.
The Miami-Ohio State game was a microcosm of several trends in a sport that is evolving with analytics, technology, longer seasons and closer ties to the NFL. Offenses are as efficient as ever: FBS teams averaged 2.24 points per drive in 2025, the most of the last decade. But overall scoring is down nearly 8% since 2016, from 28.4 offensive points per game to 26.2. Why? Because teams are averaging 7% more time between plays and 11% fewer drives per game.
Clock rules changes, longer seasons, slower offensive tempo and a surprising factor — fourth-down success — have converged to produce longer, slower drives. And in 2025, it gave even a hypertalented offense such as Ohio State’s less time and fewer opportunities to dig out of holes.
“It comes down to efficiency,” Ohio State coach Ryan Day told ESPN. “I remember back when we used to run no-huddle all the time, and [mentor Chip Kelly] and I used to always talk about, ‘When you’re running 85 plays, you don’t have to be as efficient because you get 85 calls.’ It was all signal-based. You didn’t have coach-to-player communication, and the seasons were shorter. Now, the seasons are longer, roster-building is different, maybe we’re not going to have as much depth as we used to have. All those things come into play.”
The article goes on to explain tempo changes, the two minute timeouts, and increases in 4th down attempts (it wasn’t just Kirby) has lead to offensive coordinators changing their schemes and sequencing to include 4th down attempts.
While the trend has lead to fewer offensive drives (nearly two fewer per game), the points per game has decreased by nearly a point only, and plays per game has only decreased by about four.
what does it mean? Well, less back and forth possessions, unless both teams are highly efficient on offense like the Georgia-Ole Miss game during last year’s regular season.
Also, it means that the third down strategy may be changing, which is one of the more frustrating aspects of Bono’s offensive playcalling. What we see as giving up on the first down might actually be setting it up for a fourth down attempt, instead. With the average 4th down attempt rate increasing nearly 10% in the study, it’s easy to see that OC’s in the day of analytics and Moneyball are thinking opposite of the average fan on a third down attempt.
Dammit, Moneyball. That just makes things all the more frustrating.
Well it’s about damned time.
Georgia football is recognizing a legendary assistant coach from its past by naming an area in Sanford Stadium for him.
The program’s lettermen club will now be called ‘The Coach Erk Russell Football Lettermen’s Club,” for the coach established the culture of ‘Junkyard Dawgs’ defenses.
The change was approved by the University System Board of Regents at its meeting on Thursday Aug. 13. The lettermen’s club is located on the east end of the stadium off East Campus Road.
GATA.
Shot:
Chaser:
Kind of forgot Dirty Dan once wore Pollack’s number…good on David for making a subtle point here.
